CITV

Nine Years And Four BAFTAs Later, Is It Really Farewell…?

This month ‘Share A Story’ picked up its fourth Children’s BAFTA in the Short Form Category, and who knows, such is its appeal, it may be in the running again next year for a fifth. Let’s hope so. It’s been such a privilege to be involved with this competition over the last decade and those 6 individual years we contributed. We’re incredibly proud to say that in each of the four years it won a mask, one of our short films formed part of the group. (Kudos must surely go to CharacterShop for having been the only studio to have produced a film every year it ran). The competition is testament to the enduring brainchild of Corrinne Averiss who originally created the competition as part of World Book Day to engage young readers.

Children’s author and Share A Story creator; Corrinne Averiss

‘Share A Story’ has been a feature of the CiTV schedule which has survived more dominating circumstances, such as broadcaster cut-backs and two rounds of redundancies within the producing team. Within the last decade, it’s been an annual opportunity to collaborate with old studio friends Carl Hadley, Dave Hickman and Wal Werbel. Wal was co-Director on My Motorbike which also picked up an Royal Television Society award for Best Production Craft Skills in 2012. This story was perhaps the most logistically challenging, involving some hacked model movers and motion control trickery to realise a stop-motion ‘helicopter’ shot around a mountain set (below).

Opportunities…

The one other opportunity it provided (and which will now be sorely missed) was creating placement opportunities for some fantastically talented graduates (we received hundreds of requests a year). The eager hands who joined us every autumn formed an integral part of the crew for each project. Without them the scope of our ideas for each film would not have been possible.

Mad Scientists and Bum-Biting Crocodiles…

Of the stories we got to make, we’ve seen a mad-scientist teacher, a ‘zero’ who wants to be a donut, motorcycle stunts on mountains, a bum-biting crocodile, a shark who likes pickled onion crisps, and a cosmic contest between heavenly bodies. It was a real creative highlight in the calendar when we’d get to sit down and read through the brilliantly entertaining ideas before they were whittled down from the many thousands of entries to the handful which were ultimately produced. Every story gave us the opportunity to let fly with our imaginations and try out new stuff. So, in no discernible order, thanks to all the young scribes who entrusted their stories to us: ‘Brainfood’ by Jack Land, Oh, No! Where’s Zero? by Alfie de Brito,My Motorbike by Alex Holt, The Crocodile Trap by Leah Faulks,A Shark Who Swallowed The Sea by Heidi Hogarth, The Race In The Sky by Jenotha Seenivasan. This year’s BAFTA is for a body of work shared with Kilogramme, Charactershop and Jardine Sage. Also on the studio crew were our two tireless assistants, Chris Mair and Nina Noon.

The Manchester Animation Festival has selected ‘The Race In The Sky’ to screen as part of their Commissioned Films category this autumn. We completed the film in September 2016, as our sixth animation for CiTV’s Share A Story competition for young viewers, written and read by 11-year-old Jenotha Seenivasan. The story is a cosmic tale of how the sun and moon had a race to decide who ‘owns’ the sky. The models used in the film were crafted from recycled materials and given a bit of magic using ‘light writing’, long exposures created with torchlight and bare light bulbs. Special thanks go to Nina Noon, Andrea Haenze, Chris Mair and Leah Hadley for getting stuck in with us during the production. The film will be screening on Tue November 14th at 12;10 and Wed 15th at 15:40.

After delivering a bunch of exciting new work during 2016, we finished the year with three more award nominations. Our contribution for CITV’s ‘Share A Story’, a tale about A Shark Who Swallowed The Sea, written by Heidi Hogarth was among the nominated films in the Children’s BAFTA Short Form Category. The same film was also nominated twice in the Royal Television Society Midlands Awards, for Best Production Craft Skills and Best Fictional Television Programme. This project is our fifth project involving traditional puppetry. You can find more like this here. Huge thanks go out to all who worked with us on this project.

Last year we produced My Motorbike for CITV as part of the Share A Story body of work. This month it picked up the 3rd BAFTA for Best Short Form category in the same month as winning the RTS Award for Best Production Craft Skills. Thrilled!

This month Second Home Studios won its first Royal Television Society Award for My Motorbike, produced for CITV’s Share A Story. This continues to be a creative highlight for all here at the studio, where the stories originate from eager young storytellers who are fans of the CITV channel. Not everyone who worked on the project was able to attend (as pictured) but thank you to all those lovely people who worked so hard on bringing this to life:

We’re delighted to announce that the body of work for ‘Share A Story’ 2012 picked up the BAFTA for Best Children’s Short Form again last month. Our contribution to this collection of films was ‘Oh No, Where Is Zero?’ about a wayward ‘0’ who leaves his calculator home in search of stardom in a donut lookalike competition.

Now on air – ‘Oh No! Where’s Zero?’ made for CITV’s ‘Share A Story’ competition. The story was written by 11 year old Alfie de Brito. We took his 6 panel storyboard and expanded it into a 1 minute film. The plasticine number characters were filmed on a rostrum camera with ‘checker-boarded’ mattes and then composited together. Photos courtesy of the very talented Cassidy Wingrove who worked on the models.

Background

Share A Story is into its third year and is a CITV success story. As a competition for 5-12 year olds, this year saw the biggest response from a CITV audience with over 5000 entrants. This more than tripled the total entrants in 2011. It has collected 2 BAFTA nominations in the Short Form category and is nominated again this year. It also won a Promax / BDA Design award this year in the Interstitial / Short Form Campaign Category.